You are the quarterback of the Cowboys but you are not Roger Staubach and you are not Troy Aikman and you know you never will be America’s Quarterback until you are hoisting the Lombardi Trophy high enough for Tom Landry to reach down from coaching heaven and touch it and Jerry Jones is bellowing “How ’bout them Cowboys!”

You are Tony Romo, and you are fighting the perception that when the going gets tough, you don’t get going, that when the game or the season is on the line you are the anti-Eli Manning, that the choke’s forever on you and the Cowboys.

But a new season and new opportunity are here for you, and it is not too late to grab the naysayers by the throat, to break free from whatever psychological chains have shackled you, and there is no better stage than Met Life Stadium and no better opponent than the defending champion Giants to announce you aren’t merely carefree Pancho Villa anymore, you are a cold-blooded assassin, a lionhearted gunslinger gunning for a different legacy, and you won’t be running out of bullets anytime soon.

They can knock you down, and the Giants often do, but you keep getting up, because that is what you always heard from Bill Parcells when he turned to you and handed you the ball, that your team has no chance if the quarterback is not a fighter.

You are only 32 years old and you aren’t here to kiss Eli Manning’s rings. You are here to get one of your own.

Beware Tony Romo.

“Romo’s the ultimate competitor, he loves to go hard. … He wants to win that championship,” former Cowboys and now Giants tight end Martellus Bennett said yesterday. “Everybody talks about winning a championship, but he’s putting in the work to do it. I think it’s going to pay off for him one day. … Hopefully when we’re all done [laugh].”

So you think he’s a dangerous opponent?

“I think he is, he’s always been a dangerous guy to go against,” Bennett said, “and I think a lot of people in the league respect him.”

They will respect him more when he wins more than one lonely playoff game, and he knows it.

I asked him: “How do you deal with such a high-profile position, quarterback of America’s Team, and the criticism that seems to follow you around?”

“Your job is to go out and win football games,” Romo said. “When you’re winning, a lot of things are going good, obviously, for an organization and stuff, and when you’re not, it’s a position that you go to figure out a way to turn it around. … Playing quarterback in the National Football League is the same for everybody. I don’t think it’s any different for me or anybody else.”

He is either kidding himself about this, or in denial. His prerogative.

“Troy Aikman used to say it comes with the dinner,” Cowboys coach Jason Garrett said. “There are a lot of things that come with the dinner when you’re playing quarterback for the Cowboys. What Tony needs to focus on is himself, try to make himself the best quarterback he can be, and this football team.

“There’s a lot of commentary out there that he doesn’t need to focus on, none of us need to focus on it, we need to do our jobs as well as we can do them, and Tony understands that. I think he’s understood that for a long time.”

Romo was asked: “How unfulfilling would it be if you did not reach your goal of winning a championship?”

“A lot of these questions are about long-term things, and I’m just getting though with practice against the Giants this week,” he said. “That’s my complete and utter focus right now, just going back and watching tape and trying to figure out what they’re going to do against certain looks and certain things, and get ready for that. I’m not thinking about all that other stuff.”

I tried again: “But you are conscious of the fact that you can change your legacy by winning a championship, correct?”

“Well I’m conscious of the fact that you’ve asked the question a few times,” he said, and chuckled over the speakerphone. “But I’m also understanding that this game is not about tomorrow, it’s literally about today. … For me, you could talk about it until we’re blue in the face, but it just comes down to figure out how to get better right now. All that other stuff long-term will take care of itself. But you don’t give yourself a chance to do any of that stuff if you don’t take care of today and get better.”

For Romo, it may be about today more than it is about tomorrow, but it’s also about yesterday. When the Giants shattered his championship dreams in Week 17.

“That feeling that you have, you want to bottle that up and use that every day in the offseason,” Romo said. “I think that you can use that as motivation to know that as a football team we needed to get better and improve, and I think we took steps to do that this offseason, and I’m excited going forward.”

He likely will be without tight end Jason Witten (spleen), but Miles Austin appears ready to join Dez Bryant.

“Romo’s quarterback rating in the preseason was 117, so he’s done a lot of good things,” Giants coach Tom Coughlin said.